


Fictober Day 2: Mindless, feat Anders and Mariana

by PusillanimousBitch1138



Series: Fictober 2019 [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fictober, Fictober 2019, Nightmare, The Fade, and he's PISSED, and was successful, but who knows, i mean. i don't see why anders would be pissed., in case i didn't hint at it well enough:, mariana stayed behind at adamant, so he's pissed, to find a way to sever justice from anders, vengeance. not anders.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 10:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PusillanimousBitch1138/pseuds/PusillanimousBitch1138
Summary: Mariana sees a familiar face in the Fade as she sleeps, except it's not as familiar as she'd think. Anders has to comfort her.





	Fictober Day 2: Mindless, feat Anders and Mariana

_Running. How long have I been running? It feels as though years. Legs have long since turned to jelly beneath me, lungs to ice. The landscape changes, twists and spins and floats at odd angles. Running. Why am I running? _

_I can hear them behind me, scuttling, screeching, their legs still more than strong. That’s why I’m running. I remember now. They whisper obscenities, curses, their words poisonous and cold against my neck. Closer, they’re so much closer now. The blades find my hand before I realize it, my feet stop moving and brace against my momentum to bid me turn, my arms rising to strike a killing blow—_

_“See what you have done to me.” _

_The blade falters, hangs above my head. Tears sting my eyes. “A… Anders?” _

_No. Not Anders. He’s wrong. It’s wrong. The eyes are hollow. The skin is sickly and translucent like oil upon water, and beneath the surface tendrils of blue slither like snakes in their eggs held up to the light. But it _looks _like him. They all look like him. _

_“See what has become of me, my love. You left me. Why did you leave?” _

_I know it is not him. This is not my Anders. But there is something about him, something that makes tears prickle at my eyes from fear. I am too tired. “I… I had to. You know that. I had to try. Justice was growing too strong. I had… I had to try.” Why am I wasting my time? Whatever this creature is, it doesn’t care about my motivations. _

_Not-Anders steps closer, reaches for me, and I want so desperately to pull back, to swing my blades outs and cut him down, to run, but my body won’t move. I can only watch as his fingers reach for my face. “You left me all alone, my love. All by myself in the wilderness. I’ve missed you so much…” _

_As his fingers touch my cheek, the strength from my body fails me. My blades fall forgotten to the side, my knees crumple. Not-Anders catches me easily and pulls me into him. I’m so tired, so purely and utterly exhausted that the fact that he is bone-chillingly cold and stiff and jagged don’t even register. The tears come, pouring out of me like rivers, and where they stain his clothes burns. He draws me in close, his hand going to my hair, and everywhere he touches leaves a heaviness, a cloudiness that makes it hard to think. I’ve missed him so much. _

_My eyes drift closed, and I can feel my body moving into him. I’ve missed him so much. How long has it been since he’s held me? I’m so… I’m so tired. _

_“That’s right, my love. We’re together again. You can sleep now.” _

_I… Oh. That sounds so nice… I… Yes. I think… I think I’ll sleep. _

_“I forgive you for leaving. Because we’re together now. And we’ll be together forever.” _

_Oh, how glad I am to hear that… I’ve felt so badly since leaving. _

_My arms raise to hold him, my face presses into his neck. I’m so relieved. “Anders, I…” I sigh happily and open my eyes. “I’ve missed you so much,” I whisper. _

_His hand trails across my back, the heaviness spreading with it, and it feels so good that I sigh again. My eyes open. I want to look at him, to tell myself that this is real, that he is here. Anders. My Anders. _

_Except when my eyes catch the broken mirror across the way, what they see sends shivers down my spine and wakes me from this spell. The heaviness that has suffused my body is visible to me now, heavy webs spreading across my body where it has touched me. It. Not Anders. Not even a him. An it. A pulsing, transforming facsimile of a creature, skin shifting and changing like the world around us, ugly and terrifying. I try to move. I push, I shove, I kick, but it is no use. I cannot. My body does not obey, too tired to fight any longer. _

_“Why are you resisting me, love? Are you going to leave me again?” It’s a good actor. It’s voice sounds almost convincing, kicked up with a fear that almost sounds real, but it’s not quite right. Hollow, wrong, chilling. “Don’t leave me.” Almost. Not enough. The hands around me tighten, the webs spreading, growing heavier the more I resist, urging me to stay, to sleep. _

_I open my mouth, though no sound comes. I want to tell it to let me go, to go fuck itself. I want to scream. I try to scream. All that comes from my lips is naught but a whisper, faint and hoarse, barely audible over the ambient noises of this realm. _

_The creature morphs back into Not Anders. No. Not even Not Anders. The eyes glow blue, the shifting veins under the skin glowing, too. Justice but Not Justice. It smiles at me, slow and deliberate, except the smile doesn’t stop. It extends unnaturally far, exposing row upon row of sharp teeth that make my blood run cold. “You thought you could separate us,” it hisses. Moving its face to just centimeters from mine, the hand on my back slides up to grip my neck, its thumb pressing against my windpipe. I can’t breathe, and what meager sound was coming from my throat is silenced. “Anders is _mine_. You took him from me, _stole _him from me. Did you think I would give up so easily?” _

_Vengeance laughs at my fear, the thumb against my throat cutting into me, the mouth pulling closer. The webs tighten around my body, almost painfully, as the teeth start to spread to swallow me up, and I try again to scream—_

“Mariana!”

My eyes fly open as I wake with a jolt. Hands. There are hands on me. I struggle against them, shrieking, trying to get free, the memory of the dream still heavy on my body.

“Hey, hey hey hey, calm down, calm down, love, I’ve got you.”

I… I know that voice. “No. No, go away, it’s not… it’s not real. You’re not real.” Tears streak hotly down my face as I fight against the hands.

It releases me, lets me scramble away, and in my mindless haste, I fall off the bed to the floor and scurry into the corner. It feels solid here, the ground beneath me and the walls around me. I squeeze my eyes shut, my arms wrapping around myself, and focus. This place is familiar to me. The way it smells of herbs and smoke from the fireplace, the crickets outside the window, the whuffing of Grunt outside the door. Yes. I know this place.

Slowly, I open my eyes. He is standing at the far side of the room, looking pained but not moving. But it’s him. It’s My Anders. A sound enters the room, a strangled sort of cough, and it’s only when a tear falls from his eye that I realize the sound came from me. “A…Anders?”

It’s all the permission he needs. Crossing the room in four long strides, he drops to his knees in front of me and pulls me into his arms. Another choked sob is pulled from within me as I melt into him, into his embrace which feels so _right._ It’s warm and solid and gentle and smells of him. He is careful when he touches me, his movements slow and deliberate, giving both of us time to gauge my reactions. “Are you alright?” His voice is soft, so soft, and it washes over me with a warmth as if he were casting a healing spell. “You were screaming, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t wake you…”

“I…” I take a trembling breath and press my forehead against his, my eyes screwing shut. “I… I dreamt… I was back there… in the Fade… And…” I shudder, the memories of the dream coming back in force. “Vengeance… was there. He’s… He’s angry, Anders. He’s so angry.”

Anders lets out a soft breath of a chuckle and smiles. He brushes his nose against mine then presses a soft kiss to it. “He can’t hurt us anymore, Mariana. He’s gone.”

I nod and presses closer to him, my forehead moving to lay against his shoulder. “I know that.”

“Come on, let’s go back to bed, hm?”

“Mm.”

He hauls me to my feet and holds me against his side as we make our way back to bed. Grunt’s incessant whuffing at the door is enough that Anders leaves me to go let him in, a rare occurrence. They walk back to bed together, and I’m reminded of how much time has past since the first time Anders shared my bed those 15 years ago. They’re both so much older now—er, all of us are, I suppose. It’s evident in Grunt’s heavy gait and grey face which nuzzles into my hand from the side of the bed. It’s evident in the streaks of grey peppering Anders’s blonde hair, in the speckles in his growing beard, in the wrinkles popping up around his eyes. He sits beside me, facing me, and takes my hand into his lap. I watch as he strokes from my elbow down to my wrist, each touch infused with just the faintest bit of calming magic. Sighing softly, I start to relax and look up at him.

The bed jostles roughly as Grunt heaves his heavy self up and settles beside me. Anders rolls his eyes and looks pointedly at him, his hand clasped lightly over mine. “Don’t expect this to become a habit, you opportunist. This is only for tonight.”

At Grunt’s unimpressed _huff_, I giggle and put my hand on his big head. “Look at these lovely boys of mine.” Looking between the two of them, I’m filled with such endless love and contentment I can’t help but grin. Anders smiles back at me and Grunt wags his tail heavily against the mattress. “How did I ever get so lucky?”

Anders looks as if he wants to say something, probably something self-incriminating, but he stops himself for once. Instead, he just sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing for 15 years, love. I am _quite _a catch, you know.” At my giggle, he brightens up and moves to settle down beside me, his hand still working his magic into me.

With Anders’s magic and his warmth by my side and Grunt’s heavy head laid upon my thigh, I can’t help but relax enough that my eyes grow heavy. “Anders?”

“Yes, love?”

“You’ll watch over me, won’t you?”

With a soft breath, he places a kiss to my shoulder and brushes a bit of hair from my face. “Of course I will. I will always watch over you, Mariana.”

His promise brings a tired smile to my face. “Mm. Good.”

And as I drift back to sleep, I’m pleased to find my dreams filled not of the terrors of the Fade, but of feather-light touches, heated kisses, and warm sunlight.


End file.
